་ These arguments would have wrought very much upon me, as I then told the company in a long and elaborate discourse, had I not considered the great and additional expence which such fashions would bring upon fathers and husbands; and, therefore, by no means to be thought of until some years after a peace. I further urged, that it would be a prejudice to the ladies themselves, who could never expect to have any money in the pocket, if they laid the great temptation it might give to virgins, of acting in security like married women, and by that means give a check to matrimony, an institution always encouraged by wise societies. left hand, My pretty maid,' said I, 'do you own yourself to have been the inhabitant of the garment before us?' The girl, I found, had good sense, and told me, with a smile, that, notwithstanding it was her own petticoat, she should be very glad to see an example made of it; and that she wore it for no other reason, but that she had a mind to look as big and burly as other persons of her quality; that she had kept out of it as long as she could, and until she began to appear little in the eyes of her acquaint-out so much on the petticoat. To this I added, ance; that, if she laid it aside, people would think she was not made like other women.' I always give great allowances to the fair sex upon account of the fashion, and, therefore, was not displeased with the defence of my pretty criminal. I then ordered the vest which stood before us to be drawn up by a pully to the top of my great hall, and afterwards to be spread open by the engine it was placed upon, in such a manner, that it formed a very splendid and ample canopy over our heads, and covered the whole court of judicature with a kind of silken rotunda, in its form not unlike the cupola of Saint Paul's. I entered upon the whole cause with great satisfaction, as I sat under the shadow of it. The counsel for the petticoat were now called in, and ordered to produce what they had to say against the popular cry which was raised against it. They answered the objections with great strength and solidity of argument, and expatiated in very florid harangues, which they did not fail to set off and furbelow, if I may be allowed the metaphor, with many periodical sentences and turns of oratory. The chief arguments for their client were taken, first, from the great benefit that might arise to our woollen manufac. tory from this invention, which was calculated as follows. The common petticoat has not above four yards in the circumference; whereas this over our heads had more in the semi-diameter; so that, by allowing it twenty-four yards in the circumference, the five millions of woollen petticoats which, according to sir William Petty, supposing what ought to be supposed in a wellgoverned state, that all petticoats are made of that stuff, would amount to thirty millions of those of the ancient mode. A prodigious improvement of the woollen trade! and what could not fail to sink the power of France in a few years. To introduce the second argument, they begged leave to read a petition of the ropemakers, wherein it was represented, that the demand for cords, and the price of them, were much risen since this fashion came up.' At this, all the company who were present lifted up their eyes into the vault; and, I must confess, we did discover many traces of cordage, which were interwoven in the stiffening of the drapery. A third argument was founded upon a petition of the Greenland trade, which likewise represented the great consumption of whale. bone which would be occasioned by the present fashion, and the benefit which would thereby accrue to that branch of the British trade. To conclude, they gently touched upon the weight and unwieldiness of the garment, which, they insinuated, might be of great use to preserve the honour of families. At the same time, in answer to the several petitions produced on that side, I showed one subscribed by the women of several persons of quality, humbly setting forth, that, since the introduction of this mode, their respective ladies had, instead of bestowing on them their cast gowns, cut them into shreds, and mixed them with the cordage and buckram, to complete the stiffening of their under petticoats.' For which, and sundry other reasons, I pronounced the petticoat a forfeiture: but, to show that I did not make that judgment for the sake of filthy lucre, I ordered it to be folded up, and sent it as a present to a widow-gentlewoman, who has five daughters; desiring she would make each of them a petticoat out of it, and send me back the remainder, which I design to cut into stomachers, caps, facings of my waiscoat sleeves, and other garnitures suitable to my age and quality. I would not be understood, that, while I discard this monstrous invention, I am an enemy to the proper ornaments of the fair sex. On the contrary, as the hand of nature has poured on them such a profusion of charms and graces, and sent them into the world more amiable and finished than the rest of her works; so I would have them bestow upon themselves all the additional beauties that art can supply them with, provided it does not interfere with, disguise, or pervert those of nature. I consider woman as a beautiful romantic animal, that may be adorned with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks. The lynx shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet; the peacock, parrot, and swan shall pay contributions to her muff; the sea shall be searched for shells, and the rocks for gems; and every part of nature furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is the most consummate work of it. All this I shall indulge them in; but as for the petticoat I have been speaking of, I neither can nor will allow it. French author whose name I have forgot. It so happens, that the hero's mistress was the sister of his most intimate friend, who, for certain reasons, was given out to be dead, while he was preparing to leave his country in quest of adventures. The hero having heard of his friend's death, immediately repaired to his mistress, to condole with her, and comfort her. Upon his arrival in her garden, he discovered at a distance a man clasped in her arms, and embraced with the most endearing tenderness. What should he do? It did not consist with the gentleness of a knight-errant either to kill his mistress, or the man whom she was pleased to favour. At the same time, it would have spoiled a romance, should he have laid violent hands on himself. In short, he immediately entered upon his adventures; and, after a long series of exploits, found out by degrees that the person he saw in his mistress's arms was her own brother, taking leave of her before he left his country, and the observe with greater satisfaction, than that tenderness and concern which it bears for the good and happiness of mankind. My own circumstances are indeed so narrow and scanty, that I should taste but very little pleasure, could I receive it only from those enjoyments which are in my own possession; but by this great tincture of humanity, which I find in all my thoughts and reflections, I am happier than any single person can be, with all the wealth, strength, beauty, and success, that can be conferred upon a mortal, if he only relishes such a proportion of these blessings as is vested in himself, and in his own private property. By this means, every man that does himself any real service does me a kindness. I come in for my share in all the good that happens to a man of merit and virtue, and partake of many gifts of fortune and power that I was never born to. There is nothing in particular in which I so much rejoice as the deliverance of good and generous spirits out of dangers, difficulties, and distresses. And be-embrace she gave him nothing else but the af cause the world does not supply instances of this kind to furnish out sufficient entertainments for such a humanity and benevolence of temper, I have ever delighted in reading the history of ages past, which draws together into a narrow compass the great occurrences and events that are but thinly sown in those tracts of time, which lie within our own knowledge and observation. When I see the life of a great man, who has deserved well of his country, after having struggled through all the oppositions of prejudice and envy, breaking out with lustre, and shining forth in all the splendour of success, I close my book, and am a happy man for a whole evening. fectionate faerwell of a sister: so that he had at once the two greatest satisfactions that could enter into the heart of man, in finding his friend alive, whom he thought dead ; and his mistress faithful, whom he had believed inconstant. There are indeed some disasters so very fatal, that it is impossible for any accidents to rectify them. Of this kind was that of poor Lucretia; and yet we see Ovid has found an expedient even in this case. He describes a beautiful and royal virgin walking on the sea shore, where she was discovered by Neptune, and violated after a long and unsuccessful importunity. To mitigate her sorrow, he offers her whatever she could wish for. Never certainly was the wit of woman more puzzled in finding out a stratagem to retrieve her honour. Had she desired to be changed into a stock or stone, a beast, fish, or fowl, she would have been a loser by it: or, had she desired to have been made a sea nymph, or a goddess, her immortality would but have perpetuated her disgrace. ‘Give me, therefore,' said she, such a shape as may make me incapable of suffering again the like calamity, or of being reproached for what I have already suffered.' To be short, she was turned into a man, and, by that only means, avoided the danger and imputation she so much dreaded. But, since, in history, events are of a mixed nature, and often happen alike to the worthless and the deserving, insomuch, that we frequently see a virtuous man dying in the midst of disappointments and calamities, and the vicious ending their days in prosperity and peace, I love to amuse myself with the accounts I meet with in fabulous histories and fictions; for in this kind of writing we have always the pleasure of seeing vice punished, and virtue rewarded. Indeed, were we able to view a man in the whole circle of his existence, we should have the satisfaction of seeing it close with happiness or mi. sery, according to his proper merit: but though I was once myself in agonies of grief that our view of him is interrupted by death before are unutterable, and in so great a distraction of the finishing of his adventures, if I may so mind that I thought myself even out of the posspeak, we may be sure that the conclusion and sibility of receiving comfort. The occasion was catastrophe is altogether suitable to his beha- as follows. When I was a youth in a part of viour. On the contrary, the whole being of a the army which was then quartered at Dover, I man, considered as a hero or a knight-errant, fell in love with an agreeable young woman, of is comprehended within the limits of a poem or a good family in those parts, and had the satis romance, and, therefore, always ends to our sa-faction of seeing my addresses kindly received, tisfaction; so that inventions of this kind are which occasioned the perplexity I am going to like food and exercise to a good-natured disposi- relate. tion, which they please and gratify at the same time that they nourish and strengthen. The greater the affliction is in which we see our favourites in these relations engaged, the greater is the pleasure we take in seeing them relieved. Among the many feigned histories which I have met with in my reading, there is none in which the hero's perplexity is greater, and the winding out of it more difficult, than that in a We were in a calm evening diverting our selves, upon the top of the cliff, with the prospect of the sea, and trifling away the time in such little fondnesses as are most ridiculous to people in business, and most agreeable to those in love. In the midst of these our innocent endearments, she snatched a paper of verses out of my hand, and ran away with them. I was following her, when on a sudden the ground, though No. 118.] THE TATLER. I am likewise informed, that several wives of my dead men have, since the decease of their husbands, been seen in many public places, without mourning or regard to common decency. I am further advised, that several of the defunct, contrary to the woollen act, presume to dress themselves in lace, embroidery, silks, muslins, and other ornaments forbidden to persons in their condition. These and other the at a considerable distance from the verge of the precipice, sunk under her, and threw her down from so prodigious a height upon such a range of rocks, as would have dashed her into ten thousand pieces, had her body been made of adamant. It is much easier for my reader to imagine my state of mind upon such an occasion, than for me to express it. I said to myself, it is not in the power of heaven to relieve me! when I awaked, equally transported and aston-like informations moving me thereunto, I must ished, to see myself' drawn out of an affliction which the very moment before appeared to me altogether inextricable. The impressions of grief and horror were so lively on this occasion, that while they lasted they made me more miserable than I was at the real death of this beloved person, which happened a few months after, at a time when the match between us was concluded; inasmuch as the imaginary death was untimely, and I myself in a sort an accessary; whereas her real disease had at least these alleviations, of being natural and inevitable. The memory of the dream I have related still dwells so strongly upon me, that I can never read the description of Dover-cliff in Shakspeare's tragedy of King Lear, without a fresh sense of my escape. The prospect from that place is drawn with such proper incidents, that whoever can read it without growing giddy, must have a good head, or a very bad one. Come on, sir, here's the place; stand still! hów fearful The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, No. 118.] Tuesday, January 10, 1709–10. Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti, Already ed with a farce of age, From my own Apartment, January 8. I THOUGHT to have given over my prosecution of the dead for this season, having by me many other projects for the reformation of mankind; but I have received so many complaints from such different hands, that I shall disoblige multitudes of my correspondents, if I do not take notice of them. Some of the deceased, who, I thought, had been laid quietly in their graves, are such hobgoblins in public assemblies, that I must be forced to deal with them as Evander did with his triple-lived adversary; who, according to Virgil, was forced to kill him thrice over, before he could despatch him. Ter letho sternendus erat.- -Thrice I sent him to the Stygian shore. desire, for distinction sake, and to conclude this subject for ever, that when any of these posthumous persons appear, or are spoken of, that their wives may be called widows; their houses, sepulchres; their chariots, hearses; and their garments, flannel: on which condition, they shall be allowed all the conveniences that dead men can in reason desire. As I was writing this morning on this subject, I received the following letter: From the banks of Styx. 'MR. BICKERSTAFF,-I must confess, I treated you very scurrilously when you first sent me hither; but you have despatched such multitudes after me to keep me in countenance, that I am very well reconciled both to you and my condition. We live very lovingly together; for, as death makes us all equal, it makes us very much delight in one another's company. Our time passes away much after the same manner as it did when we were among you: eating, drinking, and sleeping, are our chief diversions. Our Quidnuncs between whiles go to a coffeehouse, where they have several warm liquors made of the waters of Lethe, with very good poppy-tea. We that are the sprightly geniuses of the place refresh ourselves frequently with a bottle of mum, and tell stories until we fall asleep. You would do well to send among us Mr. Dodwell's book against the immortality of the soul, which would be of great consolation to our whole fraternity, who would be very glad to find that they are dead for good and all, and would, in particular, make me rest for ever JOHN PARTRIDGE. yours, 'P. S. Sir James is just arrived here in good health.' The foregoing letter was the more pleasing to me, because I perceived some little symptoms in it of a resuscitation; and having lately seen the predictions of this author, which are written in a true protestant spirit of prophecy, and a particular zeal against the French king, I have some thoughts of sending for him from the banks of Styx, and reinstating him in his own house, at the sign of the Globe in Salisburystreet. For the encouragement of him and others, I shall offer to their consideration a letter, which gives me an account of the revival of one of their brethren. December 31. 'SIR-I have perused your Tatler of this day, and have wept over it with great pleasure; I wish you would be more frequent in your family-pieces. For, as I consider you under the notion of a great designer, I think these are not your least valuable performances. I am "Your petitioner, therefore, most humbly prays, that you would restore the ruff to the fardingal, which in their nature ought to be as inseparable as the two Hungarian twins.* glad to find you have given over your face-paint- | to appear much bigger than the life; for which ing for some time, because I think you have reason they had false shoulder blades, like employed yourself more in grotesque figures wings, and the ruff above mentioned, to make than in beauties; for which reason I would the upper and lower parts of their bodies appear rather see you work upon history-pieces, than proportionable; whereas the figure of a woman on single portraits. Your several draughts of in the present dress bears, as he calls it, the dead men appear to me as pictures of still-life, figure of a cone, which, as he advises, is the and have done great good in the place where I same with that of an extinguisher, with a little live. The esquire of a neighbouring village, who knob at the upper end, and widening downward, had been a long time in the number of non-en- until it ends in a basis of a most enormous cirtities, is entirely recovered by them. For these cumference. several years past, there was not a hare in the County that could be at rest for him; and I think, the greatest exploit he ever boasted of was, that when he was high-sheriff of the county, he hunted a fox so far, that he could not follow him any farther by the laws of the land. All the hours he spent at home, were in swelling* himself with October, and rehearsing the won-of my own predecessors, particularly that of ders he did in the field. Upon reading your papers, he has sold his dogs, shook off his dead companions, looked into his estate, got the multiplication-table by heart, paid his tithes, and intends to take upon him the office of church-warden next year. I wish the same success with your other patients, and am, &c.' Ditto, January 9. When I came home this evening, a very tight middle-aged woman presented to me the following petition: To the worshipful Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, The humble petition of Penelope Prim, widow; showeth, 6 That your petitioner was bred a clearstarcher and sempstress, and for many years worked to the Exchange, and to several aldermen's wives, lawyers' clerks, and merchants' apprentices. That through the scarcity caused by regrators of bread corn, of which starch is made, and the gentry's immoderate frequenting the operas, the ladies, to save charges, have their heads washed at home, and the beaux put out their linen to common laundresses. So that your petitioner has little or no work at her trade; for want of which, she is reduced to such necessity, that she and her seven fatherless children must inevitably perish, unless relieved by your worship. That your petitioner is informed, that in contempt of your judgment pronounced on Tuesday the third instant against the newfashioned petticoat, or old-fashioned fardingal, the ladies design to go on in that dress. And since it is presumed your worship will not suppress them by force, your petitioner humbly desires you would order, that ruffs may be added to the dress; and that she may be heard by her counsel, who has assured your petitioner, he has such cogent reasons to offer to your court, that ruffs and fardingals are inseparable, that he questions not but two-thirds of the greatest beauties about town will have cambric collars on their necks before the end of Easter term next. He further says, that the design of our great grandmothers in this petticoat, was * Q. Swilling. And your petitioner shall ever pray.' I have examined into the allegations of this petition, and find, by several ancient pictures dame Deborah Bickerstaff, my great grandmother, that the ruff and fardingal are made use of as absolutely necessary to preserve the symmetry of the figure; and Mrs. Pyramid Bickerstaff, her second sister, is recorded in our family book, with some observations to her disadvantage, as the first female of our house that discovered, to any besides her nurse and her instep. This convinces me of the reasona her husband, an inch below her chin, or above bleness of Mrs. Prim's demand; and, therefore, I shall not allow the reviving of any one part of that ancient mode, except the whole is complied with. Mrs. Prim is therefore hereby empowered to carry home ruffs to such as she shall see in the above mentioned petticoats, and require payment on demand. Mr. Bickerstaff has under consideration the offer from the corporation of Colchester of four hundred pounds per annum, to be paid quarterly, provided that all his dead persons shall be obliged to wear the baize of that place. I HAVE lately applied myself with much satisfaction to the curious discoveries that have been made by the help of microscopes, as they are related by authors of our own and other na tions. There is a great deal of pleasure in prying into this world of wonders, which nature has laid out of sight, and seems industrious to conceal from us. Philosophy had ranged over all the visible creation, and began to want ob jects for her inquiries, when the present age, by the invention of glasses, opened a new and inexhaustible magazine of rarities, more wonderful and amazing than any of those which aston *Helen and Judith, two united twin-sisters, were born at Tzoni, in Hungary, Oct. 26, 1701; lived to the Feb. 23, 1723. The mother, it is said, survived their age of twenty-one, and died in a convent at Petersburg, birth, bore another child afterwards, and was alive when her singular twins were shown here, at a house in the Strand, near Charing-cross, in 1708. ished our forefathers. I was yesterday amusing myself with speculations of this kind, and reflecting upon myriads of animals that swim in those little seas of juices that are contained in the several vessels of a human body. While my mind was thus filled with that secret wonder and delight, I could not but look upon myself as in an act of devotion, and am very well pleased with the thought of the great heathen anatomist, who calls his description of the parts of a human body, A hymn to the Supreme Being. The reading of the day produced in my imagination an agreeable morning's dream, if I may call it such; for I am still in doubt whether it passed in my sleeping or waking thoughts. However it was, I fancied that my good genius stood at my bed's head, and entertained me with the following discourse; for, upon my rising, it dwelt so strongly upon me, that I writ down the substance of it, if not the very words. Lsing · You appears to your eye but as h... on the surface of it, we find to be woo and forests, inhabited by beasts of prey, that are as dreadful in those their little haunts, as lions and tigers in the deserts of Lybia.' I was much delighted with his discourse, and could not forbear telling him, 'that I should be wonderfully pleased to see a natural history of impercepti bles, containing a true account of such vegetables and animals as grow and live out of sight. Such disquisitions,' answered he, are very suitable to reasonable creatures; and, you may be sure, there are many curious spirits among us who employ themselves in such amusements. For, as our hands and all our senses may be formed to what degree of strength and delicacy we please, in the same manner as our sight, we can make what experiments we are inclined to, how small soever the matter be in which we make them. I have been present at the dissection of a mite, and have seen the skeleton of a 'If,' said he, you can be so transported with flea. I have been shown a forest of numberless those productions of nature which are discovered trees, which has been picked out of an acorn. to you by those artificial eyes that are the works Your microscope can show you in it a complete of human invention, how great will your sur- oak in miniature; and could you suit all your prise be, when you shall have it in your power organs as we do, you might pluck an acorn to model your own eye as you please, and adapt from this little oak, which contains another it to the bulk of objects which, with all these tree; and so proceed from tree to tree, as long helps, are by infinite degrees too minute for your as you would think fit to continue your disquiperception. We who are unbodied spirits can sitions. It is almost impossible,' added he, to sharpen our sight to what degree we think fit, talk of things so remote from common life, and and make the least work of the creation distinct the ordinary notions which mankind receive and visible. This gives us such ideas as can- from blunt and gross organs of sense, without not possibly enter into your present conceptions. appearing extravagant and ridiculous. There is not the least particle of matter which have often seen a dog opened, to observe the may not furnish one of us sufficient employment circulation of the blood, or make any other usefor a whole eternity. We can still divide it, ful enquiry; and yet would be tempted to laugh and still open it, and still discover new wonders if I should tell you, that a circle of much greater of providence, as we look into the different tex- philosophers than any of the Royal Society, were ture of its parts, and meet with beds of vegeta-present at the cutting up of one of those little bles, minerals, and metallic mixtures, and several kinds of animals that lie hid, and, as it were, lost in such an endless fund of matter. I find you are surprised at this discourse; but as your reason tells you there are infinite parts in the smallest portion of matter, it will likewise convince you that there is as great a variety of secrets, and as much room for discoveries, in a particle no bigger than the point of a pin, as in the globe of the whole earth. Your microscopes bring to sight shoals of living creatures in a spoonful of vinegar; but we who can distinguish them in their different magnitudes, see among them several huge leviathans that terrify the little fry of animals about them, and take their pastime as in an ocean, or the great deep.' I could not but smile at this part of his relation, and told him, 'I doubted not but he could give me the history of several invisible giants, accompanied with their respective dwarfs, in case that any of these little beings are of a human shape. You may assure yourself,' said he, 'that we see in these little animals different natures, instincts, and modes of life, which correspond to what you observe in creatures of bigger dimensions. We descry millions of species subsisting on a green leaf, which your glasses represent only in crowds and swarms. What * Galen, de Usu Partium. 6 animals which we find in the blue of a plum; that it was tied down alive before them; and that they observed the palpitations of the heart, the course of the blood, the working of the muscles, and the convulsions in the several limbs, with great accuracy and improvement.' 'I must confess,' said I, for my own part, I go along with you in all your discoveries with great pleasure: but it is certain, they are too fine for the gross of mankind, who are more struck with the description of every thing that is great and bulky. Accordingly we find the best judge of human nature setting forth his wisdom, not in the formation of these minute animals, though indeed no less wonderful than the other, but in that of the leviathan and bebemoth, the horse, and the crocodile.' 'Your observation,' said he, 'is very just; and I must acknowledge, for my own part, that although it is with much delight that I see the traces of providence in these instances, I still take greater pleasure in considering the works of the creation in their immensity, than in their minuteness. For this reason, I rejoice when I strengthen my sight so as to make it pierce into the most remote spaces, and take a view of those heavenly bodies which lie out of the reach of human eyes, though assisted by telescopes. What you *See Job, chap. xxxix. xl. xli. |